BRADENTON, Fla. — A Florida brewery that recently began placing shelter dogs’ faces on beer cans helped reunite a Minnesota woman with her dog, Hazel, who went missing three years ago.
Last month, Motorworks Brewing in Bradenton teamed up with the Manatee County Animal Shelter to turn beer cans into adoption flyers for shelter dogs. Monica Mathis of St. Paul, Minn., told KSTP that she couldn’t believe it when she spotted Hazel’s face on a beer can that had been photographed and posted on social media.
Hazel, a terrier mix, was among the dogs featured on beer cans called “The Four Packs.”
Mathis saw the post and something about one dog’s eyes caught her attention. “Oh my gosh that looks like my dog, I think that’s my dog,'” Mathis said. But the featured dog’s name was Day Day.
Mathis contacted the shelter, which needed proof that Day Day was in fact Hazel.
“I sent everything I could find — all the pictures so I could stop an adoption process from happening because I could’ve lost her again,” Mathis said.
Mathis was living in Iowa when Hazel disappeared in 2017.
“She was on a leash outside and I went to get her and she was gone from our yard,” Mathis said. She searched, called shelters, but never found the dog.
She said she has no idea how the dog got to Florida.
Then, a new job took her to Minnesota. Several years went by until she saw the beer can campaign.
The shelter confirmed that Day Day is Hazel.
“I was amazed, I was crying. An emotional wreck,” Mathis said.
Mathis said animal services couldn’t immediately find her because the contact information on Hazel’s microchip was out of date.
The nonprofit Friends of Manatee County Animal Services will cover the cost of transporting Hazel to Minnesota, which will be in time to celebrate Hazel’s seventh birthday.
